"Depending on Where We Stand"
Kit Hadley
Sunday, February 23rd, 2003

One of the many interesting things I got to do at the MHFA was to meet occasionally with foreign visitors.

We met with members of the South African consulate in Chicago after Nelson Mandela was elected president. I am quite sure they learned nothing useful from us, but we were in awe just being around people engaged in such a profound and inspiring political transformation.

We met with the Finnish Minister of Finance who, by the way, looked like a female lead in a James Bond movie. After we stopped gawking, we had a fascinating conversation. They know so much about the real state of people’s housing. She asked us, for example, if we knew at any given point in time how the size of people’s apartments varied by race. We could only shake our heads at the sorry state of information about housing in this country.

But the most moving exchange came with visitors from Haiti, a group of lawyers, judges, and journalists. They asked us, among other things, what happens in this country when someone can’t pay their rent. We explained that after a number of procedural safeguards are observed, people can be put out onto the street. One member of the delegation turned to us and said in a clear and passionate voice, “But that’s not right.”

He articulated arguments based on the International Covenant on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights which, I have come to learn, 104 countries have signed and ratified and which three, including the United States, have only signed but not ratified.

From where he stood, being adequately housed was fundamental, central to every aspect of social, economic, and cultural life and it was, therefore, a right belonging to every human being.

We stood, completely unacquainted with any international covenants concerning housing, with an explanation why housing isn’t a right in the United States, but we had no real answer.

It has been axiomatic among affordable housing advocates in the last five to eight years that the argument that housing is a right or that providing affordable housing is the morally right thing to do is an ineffective argument. Advocates and others have instead grounded their efforts on the considerable evidence of the connection between affordable housing and job growth, student achievement, self-sufficiency, independent living, and on and on. I have been among the proponents of this strategy.

These arguments have in fact been more persuasive. They have made sense to a broader group of people, convinced more non-usual suspects. The visibility of affordable housing has been raised and, until now, funding increased. But recent events, including my own transition from MHFA, have made me rethink the role of arguments about fundamental rights in social justice efforts.

Ever since the death of Paul Wellstone and the conclusion of the November elections I have been reflecting on the stunning success of far right conservative politics in this country. I see a movement that began 25 to 35 years ago that has been systematic and focused on the long haul; a movement that did not start with its proponents making equivocal pronouncements but rather shockingly bold pronouncements that many of us could not imagine would ever gain credence; and finally, whether we like it or not, a movement that has been fueled by passion and faith, by sincerely held beliefs among many about how the world should be, beliefs that are grounded in religious views.

The fact that these views are not my own or your own is not the point. Isn’t the lesson here the power of faith in action?

My mother attends a progressive Episcopal Church in Columbus, Ohio, that calls itself an Open Table Church. Last month they hosted Marcus Borg, one of the leading progressive Christian theologians and author of Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time.

My mother was struck by Borg’s talk about how Christians are better at charity than justice.

Charity is serving the homeless.

Justice is ending homelessness.

When I think of justice initiatives in the affordable housing world, I think of the efforts of groups like ISAIAH and its member assemblies, including MICAH, the Metropolitan Interfaith Council on Affordable Housing. But I have been most affected by the recent success of the Great River Interfaith Partnership in the St. Cloud area, also an assembly of ISAIAH.

This assembly of members from faith congregations, which calls itself GRIP, convinced five city councils to sign on to a joint agreement that each city would work to ensure that 15% of all new development was affordable. They had a vision for their own communities.

They systematically organized throughout a multi-year effort; negotiated, drafted, redrafted, negotiated some more with city officials and builders; and, when it looked like city council members might waiver in their commitment, packed city council meetings when votes were close. Their effort was not about one or two isolated, albeit extremely important, individual housing projects, but about completely changing the region’s approach to all housing development.

We have seen efforts around the state where cities have demonstrated their commitment in a variety of ways to affordable housing. But to my knowledge this initiative is the only effort in the country - and certainly the only one in the state - to involve more than one political jurisdiction voluntarily joining together in this common commitment to affect the development of housing for all people. It felt special getting to know some of the members of GRIP. Seeing them in action was seeing faith in action.

I belong to that group of fuzzy thinking baby boomers who are un-churched but feel deeply spiritual. I grew up in a progressive non-denominational Protestant church that was central to my early years. As an adult, however, I have been connected to faith communities only sporadically.

Yet despite my only occasional bouts with the organized church, I feel that I am a person who is moved by faith. I have always been passionate about my work in affordable housing and at legal aid before that. I feel that my passion comes from values at the core of my being about how the world should be and about why we are in it together. I’m clear that these values come from the faith tradition in which I was raised.

I think that there are many people like me, although probably not any of you. It’s awkward being asked to do a homily at St. Joan of Arc with your great history of faith in action. But I think there are great numbers of people like me who are passionate about social and economic justice who do not declare that they are inspired by their faith, who have avoided declaring such a grounding because of the misuse of such arguments over the millennia. Many of us can make accurate and persuasive policy arguments in favor of social justice efforts, but few of us say, “I stand here because of my religious convictions.”

The GRIP initiative in St. Cloud teaches me three things.

1. First, people took collective political action. To paraphrase my mother paraphrasing Marcus Borg again, unlike charity which can be done in private, justice always makes its way to the public square.
2. Second, GRIP’s initiative was a campaign of people seeking social and economic justice where they live, in their own communities. It was not a mission to promote affordable housing somewhere else. It was not only about the needs of others. It was people standing for how they want the place they live to be welcoming to people with differences.
3. And finally, it was people declaring that their own faith vision and religious convictions compelled them to take the action they were taking. What moved them was as important to their success as what they said and did.

Perhaps the power of the argument that housing is a fundamental right lies not just in its effectiveness on the minds of elected officials and voters but in its effect on the heart of the activist. Maybe it’s not winning the debate about whether housing is a fundamental right that is important, but rather moving with the spirit that comes from knowing that it is.